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Overrider Announce Debut Mini-Album cyc|er Released 15th May 2020

Published on Friday, 27 March, 2020 - 22:47

Manchester, UK based electronic newcomers Overrider are pleased to reveal details of their debut mini-album, cyc|er, set for release on 15th May 2020. The record is available to preorder now on bandcamp: https://overrider.bandcamp.com/album/cyc-er-2

Featuring the talents of members of Cleft, Alpha Male Tea Party, and Giraffes? Giraffes!, cyc|er is an urgent, modern, and timely record which examines defiance in the face of depression and hopelessness, intensely relevant for the times we’re living through. Lead single ‘Ansible’ is out now and available to stream or download on bandcamp https://overrider.bandcamp.com/album/ansible, accompanied by an official video: https://youtu.be/tANJr7I3aIE

Commenting on the single, their guitarist says: “This is probably our most aggressive track, and one of the more guitar heavy. There's a lot going on—it was inspired by the live sound of bands like Massive Attack, where there's all these layers of noise, percussion and sub bass that combine into this sonic assault."

"This track is specifically about the period where you are cycling out of extreme depression. It's about the inertia of recovery and how you need to communicate with others to pull through. It's dark, but, like a lot of material on the record, it's also defiant. Oh, and on a lighter note,” add the band, “we added the glockenspiel intro as a joke reference to 65daysofstatic. Great band."

Taking influence elsewhere from Oceansize, NIN, and Curve, the record is “supposed to sound like a transmission from deep space," say the band, "garbled and messed up”—as such, crushed voices, dark layers of noise, and a sinister atmosphere pervade throughout. Of the tracks on the record, 'The Left Hand', 'Possibility Sword', and 'Black Hatch' are perhaps the most electronic-leaning, often using manipulated textures and samples.

In bringing cyc|er—and its companion-piece, the tongue-in-cheek b-sides collection re|cycler—to life, the band enlisted their friends, drummer John Simm (formerly of 'turbo-prog' heroes Cleft), and producer Tom Peters (Alpha Male Tea Party). For the re-working of single 'Possibility Sword' on 're|cycler', Joe Andreoli, the guitarist of cult math-rockers Giraffes? Giraffes! recorded all-new guitar takes.

The genesis of the project can be found in live-coding experiments using the Tidalcycles and Overtone libraries, as the band explain; "we spent years trying to come up with a way of using these random, algorithmic approaches to make something musical. In the end, the balance turned out to be using code to rip up samples and then adding traditional instrumentation over the top."

"There's a kind of hacker aesthetic to the whole project," they continue, "which included things like track names in extended unicode. When we came to sharing finished songs with friends we found they crashed phone media players and all sorts. We had to re-name all the files and sanitize everything."

Overrider’s songs are dark and often dissonant, building on the underlying theme of distance and space. "It's a pretty transparent metaphor for depression," they say. "Most of these tracks deal with that subject in some way. The isolation, the creep of it, the darkness; but also the light." Mastered by producer Tom Peters—whose own work at Trapdoor Studios, like so many others, has been severely affected by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic—his deft touch and attuned ears were vital to the project’s final sound.

"Without Tom, the record couldn't have happened in the way it has,” say the band, “and he's also a dear friend besides. We appreciate everybody is having a tough time at the moment, but Tom is offering deferred sessions for later in the year as well as remote mixing and mastering in order to keep the doors of his studio open during the crisis, so if you do need any of those things then please get in touch with him: https://tompetersproduction.com/trapdoor-studios”

Towards the end of writing sessions for the record, Overrider’s guitarist was hit by a car and briefly hospitalised. From this apparent tragedy, a burst of creativity followed, resulting in 'Agitated' I & II, and 'The Left Hand'. "I guess it's predictable to say it changed my perspective," he muses, "but I felt like the record needed something a bit triumphant, that wasn't too overthought. Sometimes things come along in life that you didn't expect, which derail your plans, and mostly you survive them and come out stronger."

cyc|er then, is very much a product of our times; war drums sounding from the depths of deep isolation, disparate rhythms and voices joining together in opposition to the silence and darkness which can close in around us in moments of crisis.